It's something that many of us have been saying for many years. But I've been largely insulated from it: I have blocked all scripts and ads (for privacy and security reasons, but also because most sites serve proprietary JavaScript code) for years. If it weren't for my research (https://mikegerwitz.com/talks), I wouldn't have realized just how bad it has become.

I've also run all my browsing through #Tor for years. And what this article reminds me of (but does not mention; this is unrelated) is how Tor used to be so painfully slow---worse than dialup. It has improved drastically over the years, but by design, it's always going to be slower than directly connecting to a webserver.

But despite that, websites often finish loading for me much faster than those who use the "normal" web over a normal connection, because it's not loading so much shit. That also allows me to stick to <256MiB of data per month on my mobile plan, despite browsing sites linked to on HN and despite the extra packets from Tor itself. (Btw, text.npr.org is great, for those who didn't know of it.)

The very things that got me downvoted into oblivion on HN years ago are now the popular, obvious things. Why do things have to get so _bad_ before most people begin to care?

I hope I didn't violate any unwritten rules by doing so. I obviously didn't write the article, and I didn't even come across it organically—I saw it linked on Mastodon (by @baldur and @starbreaker )

I only posted it because I thought that it might also be interesting to a broader audience, but I didn't expect it to sit on the front page for so long. I hope I didn't steal credit/karma/Internet points from the author or anyone

@codesections Ah, small world! I think it's generally preferred that others link to works, rather than the original author (with the exception of "Show HN" things). HN is a news aggregator; it exists for others to share links with one-another.

Thanks for sharing it, though. I'm happy to see the topic getting attention.